


Convergence Of Interest

by Britpacker



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene, Season/Series 04, post ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:46:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/531038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Ep for the Affliction/Divergence story arc.  Past and future: the boys have some talking to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Convergence Of Interest

**Author's Note:**

> You know the drill, I'm sure... this is for pleasure, not profit, and they al belong to Paramount. I don't have a beta, so I'll claim any and all mistakes. Being a confirmed T/R type, there were a few things around those episodes I needed to explain away.

He didn’t leap to attack posture the instant his door slid open. Only one person had access any time of the day or night, and his silent entrances had been bitterly missed in the last few painful weeks. “Hey darlin’. ‘m I intrudin’?”

“Never.” Setting aside his book Reed slithered off the bunk, arms extended for a hug. “Missed you.”

“Right back at ya, Handsome.” His chin atop the Englishman’s dark crown, Commander Trip Tucker took a deep breath, needing to imprint the scent of his lover on his lungs again. “I've been talkin’ to the Cap’n’s. They’re okay with me an' Kelby switchin’ around.”

“You’re coming back?”

“Yep." Trip Tucker grinned down at the other man. "Johnny figures someone needs to keep his Armoury Officer outta the brig, an’ Cap’n Hernandez wants a Chief Engineer with his heart on her ship. Makes sense to me.”

“I suppose so.” He didn’t miss the tremor running through the slight frame in his arms, though Malcolm’s face betrayed nothing when he raised it to the taller man’s concerned one. “Christ, I’ve missed you!”

“Missed you more.” His lover was pale and drawn, dark smudges under tired grey eyes testament to the strain he had been under during their separation. “Next time we decide t’ do somethin’ as dumb as servin’ on different ships, jus’ shoot me, alright?”

“Stun setting only, I presume?” Unresisting, Reed allowed himself to be guided to the bed and cuddled on the Southerner’s lap, his aching head on Trip’s shoulder. “I’ve already had _The Talk_ from Captain Archer; anti-fraternisation regs don’t apply to NX starships, no need for over-reaction to rumours, don’t we know he will always stand up for us. “

“I got it from Cap’n Hernandez too.” The Englishman’s arms had slipped around him, and for the first time in too many days Trip could feel warmth seeping through his chilled bones. He shifted cautiously until they were stretched full-length on the bunk, Reed lying atop his taller partner. “And y’ know what? I don’t care what they say, or what some desk-jockey back in San Fran thinks. I just wanna be with the man I love, and if they don’t like it they c’n _git stuffed_.”

The quintessentially English expression won a shiver of laughter. “Or knotted, as the case may be,” Reed muttered, giving the tempting neck beneath his lips a playful nip. “You’re really staying? What about T’Pol?”

“I’ve talked t’o her.” The Vulcan had been awkward; almost apologetic, conscious of the discomfort she had caused him. “She’s been a little weird, even by her standards, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t want her, Vulcan divorce or no, an’ I think she’s gettin’ the message. Guess we both allowed ourselves to get paranoid this time.”

“Mmmm.” Muscles that had spent weeks in a state of permanent tension were relaxed just by his touch, and to his horror Malcolm realised they were not the only things set free as tears began to spill onto his high cheekbones.

Mortified, he buried his face into the hollow of the blond’s throat, fighting to contain the shudders that wracked him. “Aw darlin’, it’s alright,” Tucker crooned, tightening his hold with one hand carding through the thick sable hair. “It’s all over now, Phlox is safe an’ whatever you got yerself into, you’re through it. Just leggo, Mal, you cry it out, I’m here. It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry.” Tenderness. He wasn’t used to it, and oh, it was addictive! Blinking rapidly, Reed lifted his head to meet the engineer’s troubled gaze. “It’s just – oh, bollocks! I really thought I’d got away from them, and now…”

Trip rolled them until the two men were on their sides, nose to nose on the pillow, breath gently fanning each other’s lips. “Ah don’t pr’tend t’ understand whatcha got yerself into, Mister Reed,” he said solemnly, pleased by Malcolm’s derisive snort in reply. “But I do know _you_. Whatever you did was to try andhelp a friend, yeah? Cap’n knows that – he jus’ said so. And I'm bettin’ Phlox understands – you’ve been to see ‘im, right?”

“Of course.” Though the interview had been one Reed anticipated with the same enthusiasm his ten-year-old self had experienced outside his father’s study, it had proven cathartic, even if the generosity of the Denobulan’s spirit had left him feeling decidedly small. “But you know the one about the road to Hell.”

“I’m thinkin’ you’ve been down that one in the last few weeks, darlin’. Gawd, if only I’d been here when this Harris guy started hasslin’ you’!”

_Oops!_

The slender form tightened appreciably. “I see your old friend has been putting you in the picture.” The words were dangerously clipped.

“You think I didn’t go tearin’ into him demandin’ to know what the best man in the ‘fleet was doin’ a prisoner?” Shuffling up to rest his back against the bulkhead, Trip made no attempt to restrain the younger man. “He told me you’d been actin’ on the orders of some guy named Harris – some kind of secret ops. Said he couldn’t tell me anythin’ more. Jeez, Mal, if I’d been here…”

“You’re the last person I could have told.” The hurt on the handsome face broke his heart. Malcolm leaned back against his desk, gripping the edge so hard his knuckles cracked painfully. “It’s not something one brings up in pillow-talk, is it? By the way darling, did you know you’d been sleeping with a spy for the last year?”

“Guess that’d be a conversation-killer.” Tuckers didn’t get the rigid schooling of Reeds in controlling their emotions, but Trip had learned a few tricks in their time together. He lounged comfortably on the bed, and waited.

He didn’t have to wait for long. “Clause fourteen, section thirty-one of the founding charter,” Malcolm rapped out. “In exceptional circumstances – I’m paraphrasing, obviously – Starfleet reserves the right to do whatever it bloody well pleases, oh and by the way, we’ll be the judge of what actually constitutes an _exceptional circumstance_ , thank you very much. Harris has been in charge of the Section for five years. He’s a bastard, but he’s an efficient one. Gets the job done, no matter what the cost. Knows where the bodies are buried, and isn’t scared to dig them up with his bare hands. That’s why he’s lasted.”

“And why he was able to contact you without Hoshi pickin’ it up right away?”

A sharp nod. “Also why my confidential file says I’m straight, and you know that’s not entirely true.”

“This – Section 31.” _Tread carefully Trip ol’ buddy, he’s still jumpy as a mouse in a barn full of kittens._ “It’s got the authority to screw around with confidential records?”

“Authority and access, sanctioned by the top brass.” Malcolm’s shoulders lowered a fraction – just enough for an acute observer to identify a minimal relaxation. Tucker gave himself a mental round of applause. Cool and unconcerned, even if his guts were knotted to hell; that was the way to handle a defensive, guilt-ridden Reed. “It was naive of me to think I’d seen the last of them. One doesn’t just hand in one’s notice to a secret service.”

“You been workin’ for them long?” Trip patted the mattress at his side, almost whooping for joy when, reluctantly, the younger man accepted the invitation. Malcolm grimaced.

“Not for a while; when I told Captain Archer Harris hadn’t contacted me on Enterprise, I was telling the truth.”

“I know, an’ so does Jon. He trusts you, Malcolm.”

“He always has been gullible.”

“Hey!” Hands strong as steel clamps gripped his shoulders, twisting the unwilling Englishman to face his partner’s cerulean stare. “That’s my best friend you’re talkin’ about, an’ my lover you’re sayin’ he shouldn’t trust. I don’t care what you’ve done before; I know the man you are now, Malcolm Reed, an’ that’s the most honourable, decent, trustworthy person I’ve ever met. Dontcha go talkin’ yourself or Jonny down, okay, ‘cause I won’t have it.”

“And you wonder why I never mentioned the Section,” Malcolm muttered, unable to hold that loving gaze. His long fingers twisted in his lap. “They recruited me right out of the Academy; I’ve done odds and sods at their bidding ever since.”

Sudden, incongruous pleasure smoothed the creases Trip had begun to think were ironed into his broad brow. “I doubt he’ll risk contacting me in future, though. He called to thank me for my assistance and got the brush-off.”

“Ouch,” the Southerner replied with feeling.

Malcolm’s mouth twitched into its familiar half-smile. “I merely advised him I answer to Captain Archer now; in other words, next time he needs Enterprise for any of his nefarious schemes, they’ll be cleared with the Captain before I comply. The Section doesn’t need self-righteous busybodies analysing their every move, so I may just get away with it.”

“You callin’ the Cap’n names there, Lootenant?”

“A Section 31 assessment, Commander. The captain knows of their existence now, and he doesn’t approve. They won’t risk him interfering in future operations.”

“So you’re in the clear?”

“Hardly.” Things suddenly didn’t seem as desperate as they had even an hour ago, and Malcolm was sufficiently tired of deception to acknowledge why.

Trip hadn’t bolted.

He’d been an idiot to think the great open-hearted, straightforward lummox would do anything of the sort. And suddenly, it was vital that one person – this person – knew everything, even though he would never ask. 

Precisely, Malcolm mused, because he wouldn’t ask. Trip trusted him. He had to be worthy of that.

“I was an ensign when they recruited me; barely out of the Academy and serving my first posting on the Cochrane. One of my fellow crew was jumped leaving the gym on Jupiter Station; I waded in to give him a hand, and the next thing I know, I’m being asked to meet a Commander Smith – yes, I even believed that was his real name – in the back room of a bar.”

“They set you up.”

“Bingo. Not that I realised it, of course. Would I be kind enough to assist in a small matter of grave importance to Starfleet - strictly entre nous, mustn’t bother Captain Roberts with it, he’s a very busy man. It seemed – exciting.”

It had been more than that. Half-truths might work with Archer, but Trip deserved more. Swallowing hard, he tried to tell the bald truth in a normal tone. He almost managed it.

“I felt useful. As if I belonged to something. Before I understood what I’d done, I was up to my neck.”

And if Harris – or his predecessor, the mysterious Commander Smith, whatever the man’s real name was - had been within reach at that moment Trip Tucker would willingly have wrung his. Conscious of the isolation the adult officer still felt, he could only imagine how vulnerable greenhorn ensign Reed must have felt under the blandishments of the first people to offer, for whatever reason of their own, the attention he craved.

“Easily in but not easily out, huh?” he asked, deliberately bland.

“As the lobster cried in the pot,” Malcolm agreed, cautiously nestling into the crook of his lover’s arm. “Christ, I was a fool! It dawned on me slowly over the years, doing their dirty work on demand… I must’ve read too many Ian Fleming novels under the bedclothes at boarding school.”

“No women throwin’ themselves at y’our feet or bad guys boastin’ while you wriggled outta the handcuffs, huh?”

Malcolm grinned. “More digging around in waste bins and infiltrating groups of nutters making loud threats against Ambassador Soval,” he confessed. “And being bi… well, my sexuality was useful, as long as it remained secret. Over the years I realised I’d thrown my career away for a sordid fantasy of being _valuable_.”

“You seem to be doin’ okay to me!” Trip protested. “Chief Tac. Officer on the flagship!”

“I’m welcome to make Commander on my own merits, love, but that’s the limit.” There was no resentment any more, and Reed was long past regretting what couldn’t be changed. 

His grey eyes steady, he met the American’s stricken expression with a weary smile. “I know too much of the murkier side of our glorious organisation to ever be trusted with a command. Starfleet likes its captains to be unsullied innocents. I’ll be welcome to a brilliant career in R&D – and fortunately I’ll even enjoy it. But the day I get that third shiny pip is the day I’ll be withdrawn from front-line service. “

“Mal I’m sorry.” The loss would be Starfleet’s; even T’Pol acknowledged Lieutenant Reed had the skills to make one hell of a starship captain someday. The Englishman’s shoulders lifted.

“Nobody to blame but myself, but thanks all the same. “

He really had accepted his fate, and Trip wasn’t sure whether to hug him or throttle him for it. “They don’t like their cap’ns to know what goes on in the dark, huh?”

“Quite. Operatives who reach command levels are a risk to the whole organisation; and the brass can’t take risks with the dirty-tricks brigade.”

The second-oldest profession, Trip remembered. He had a nasty suspicion it involved a little of the oldest too, given Malcolm’s resigned reference to his sexuality.

“You know, I’ve never seen the attraction of bein’ the big boss on the bridge,” he said, long, broad fingers drawing idle patterns down his lover’s tense arm. “I’ve always figured I’d jump at the chance to join engineerin’ research someday. Work out kinda nice, the both of us takin’ jobs on Earth I reckon.”

“You’d give up deep space?”

“Rather than take Jonny’s job? In a second. To be with you? Even faster.”

“Even though you know I’ve been lying to you all this time?”

“You’ve never lied to me, Mal.” With a guileless smile, Trip hauled his unresisting partner onto his lap, revelling in the closeness he had yearned for in his empty Colombia cabin. “Ah jus’ never asked!”

“Imbecile.” Separate ships had been as stupid a mistake a snatching the Section’s tarnished shilling, but Malcolm Reed prided himself on learning from his cock-ups. “I’m sorry I never told you – or the Captain, frankly, he deserved better from me.”

“He understands you were put in an impossible position, darlin’; and yes maybe you’ve only got yourself to blame. But Jon knows you, an’ he knows he can count on you.”

And he had promised to prove it the only way his sceptical security chief would understand: with greater respect for self-preservation on away missions, exactly what Malcolm had been asking since the first day out of space dock. 

“An’ look on the bright side. If anybody can keep this Harris off your tail, it’ll be Jonathan Archer.”

“That’s true.” Remembering the curdled-milk look on his former boss’s face when the Captain’s name had been spoken, Malcolm could almost wish he’d been privy to their confrontation. He wriggled in his lover’s lap, bringing himself around to lay his parted lips on Trip’s upturned ones. “And I have you to watch my back again now.”

“You’ll always have me, darlin’.” The words disappeared into the depths of the Englishman’s kiss and in the last instant of sanity Trip Tucker could have sworn he felt the shadows of the past dissolve among the stars. 

Here and now. The future. He and Malcolm had that, and he would make damn sure Mister Harris, Captain Reed or anyone else would never blight his partner’s life again.


End file.
